


Lost and Found

by soliloquize



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And Friendship, F/M, M/M, and Heartbreak, and heartbreaking friendship, typical levels of marauders era angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 18:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7398874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquize/pseuds/soliloquize
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius is his first real friend, his friend that James picks for himself, his friend that is more than just the kid of his mum’s coworker, his best friend, his friend he can’t imagine going through life without.</p><p>James is the best thing in his life.  His first real friend, his friend who chooses him, his friend who likes Sirius for himself and not his ancestry, his best friend, his friend who is the first person to say I love you to him with no strings attached.</p><p>~never one without the other, James Potter and Sirius Black~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

I.  Found

_D’you ever wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t found your compartment on the train way back when?_ he sometimes asks.  Sirius always shudders and says,

            _I don’t want to._

            And James knows exactly what he means.  Sirius is his first real friend, his friend that James picks for himself, his friend that is more than just the kid of his mum’s coworker, his _best_ friend, his friend he can’t imagine going through life without.

            Remus and Peter are great too, and James doesn’t _want_ to imagine life without them either, but the thing is, he thinks he probably could.  The four of them together are a kickass quartet but sometimes it just happens that Sirius and James wind up singing the same harmonies and suddenly they’re two duos, or maybe a trio.  JamesandSirius and Remus and Peter. 

 

            It’s Sirius James finds his first secret passage with.  They’re running from the Dungbomb they set off at the entrance to the dungeons, and Slughorn’s after them, wheezing and puffing (even though James is pretty sure the lazy professor hasn’t even broken into a run).  There are voices coming from up around the bend, they’re in for it for sure, so he grabs Sirius and pulls him sideways behind a tapestry.  They’re both twigs of boys, really, no matter how many push-ups James does before breakfast, surely they can press themselves flat enough against the wall to escape notice.  Instead they stumble into a narrow corridor.  Without the expected barrier to arrest his momentum, James falls, dragging Sirius down on top of him in a mess of tangled limbs and hushed giggles.

            _Shh, we don’t want Sluggy to hear us!_

 _Like he could hear anything over those wheezes_.

            The two of them are flushed with the success of their prank and the luck of their discovery, pressed against each other, comfortable, in synch, happy.  They follow the passage to the end and it’s only their third week, so James has no idea what part of the castle they come out in.  They spend the afternoon wandering through a whole mess of corridors before they manage to find their way back to the Gryffindor common room to share the news of the passage with Remus and Pete.

            And the moment is golden

 

            That’s the passage where James finds Sirius at the end of the year.  His eyes are grey, like always, only now they’re rainclouds instead of their normal steel.

            _Do you want to talk about it?_

Sirius shakes his head.  James feels about as useless as an aurgey in a rainforest, but his mum always says the only cure for a bad day is a hug, so James slides down to the stone floor and puts his arms tentatively around Sirius’s hunched shoulders.

            _I don’t want to go home_ , Sirius finally chokes out.  _I’m in Gryffindor and they’ll hate me, and I don’t even belong in this bloody house because I’m too scared to face them for a whole summer_.

            _Then don’t_ , James says fiercely.  _Come and stay with us.  Mum’s always complaining aobut me driving her up a wall over the hols, she’ll be glad if I have a friend._

_I can’t… they wouldn’t let me._

_Since when do we care what we’re_ allowed _to do?_   A laugh finally breaks free of Sirius, bright in the dark passage.  _We’ll come get you, promise_.

            Two weeks later the Potters find Sirius on the doorsteps of the Black family’s London house next to a trunk almost as big as he is.  His hair is combed as neatly as James’s ever seen it.

            _Not looking to say goodbye?_ James’s dad asks.  He knows the Blacks—his aunt married one—and he also seems to know the answer to his question before he even speaks.  He gently offers Sirius his hand, Mum grabs James’s, and they all twist on the spot.  James opens his eyes and they’re home; he reaches out to mess up Sirius’s hair and Sirius musses his hair back.

 

            James knows Sirius better than anyone else, but he hadn’t known this was the year his little brother started at Hogwarts until McGonagall reads out _Black, Regulus_ and the hat shouts _Slytherin!_ before James can even think of what to say (though he does think maybe it’s better this way; Sirius does not like talking about his family).

            But nothing has to be said when James climbs into Sirius’s four poster that night to hug him, remind him without words that he has another family.  The position is comforting and familiar; they share James’s bed at home over the holidays so they can build pillow forts and whisper plots back and forth until it’s late enough a Permanent Sticking Charm couldn’t keep their eyes open.   The Hogwarts beds aren’t as big as the Potters’, but neither one minds the closeness.

            Remus and Peter find them the next morning, Pete already snickering and Remus’s eyebrows drawn toward his hairline, with a suggestion to look up _codependent_ in the dictionary to see if the entry is just a picture of the two of them.  (It is, but only because Remus already changed it).

            And it’s a laughably easy transition to go from cuddling the bad days and dreams away to kissing them out of existence.  All James has to do that Christmas break is bring his lips to Sirius’s while he snakes an arm around him.  Simple.  Impulsive.  Breathtaking.

            Sirius’s lips are soft and unyielding and perfectly still against the pressure of James’s until James breaks away.

            _Why’d you do that?_

            _I don’t know._   Because he was curious about how it would feel.  Because it seemed like a logical continuation of their embrace.  Because he didn’t want to start the new year without ever having kissed anyone.  Because Sirius had been seeming down lately and James would have been willing to a lot worse than kiss to change that. 

            He’s got plenty of hypotheses; he just doesn’t know which is right.  _Was it okay?_

            A sharp nod.

            _Can I do it again?_   If you’re unsure of your results, run more trials, Dad always said.  James was certainly confused, but he didn’t have to be unscientific.

            And Sirius nods again, so James leans back in—slowly this time, trying to notice everything.

            They’re both on their sides, with Sirius slightly under him; James leans on his elbow to keep his full weight off Sirius.  The arrangement makes Sirius reach for his lips, searching—the first kiss they were just holding a pose, but this time it’s dynamic and exponential, a hundred small kisses all wrapped up into one.

            They’re not _good_ at it, at least James doesn’t think so (he doesn’t exactly have a basis for comparison).  They both keep trying to take the lead and their teeth are clacking together and at one point James goes to shift his weight and overbalances, falling onto Sirius and knocking the wind out of both of them.  (None of it makes James want to stop).

            They don’t stop, not until Mum calls them to dinner.  James goes down to eat with his mouth tasting like Sirius’s, and their knees knocking together under the table.  He doesn’t know any more about what’s going through his head than he did half an hour ago, but it’s okay, really, it’s great.  When he falls asleep that night his lips are swollen and his head is on Sirius’s chest.  He can’t think of anything more to ask for.

 

            Whatever it is they have, it’s not romantic.  It’s not at all the way James sort of fancies McGonagall ( _shut_ up _, Sirius, she’s fit_ ) or how Peter can never speak when Mary MacDonald is around.  It’s more than that.  It’s better.  It’s being there for each other, whatever they need, no matter what.

            It’s James punching the wall after botching the Animagus transformation _again_ —they’ve been working at this for two bloody years and every month that passes is another nightmare Remus has to endure alone and James should be able to fucking do this—and Sirius going to him and running his hands through James’s hair, sliding them down his neck, shoulders, arms, to his arse, and grabbing him close.  Kissing him in a way that says _I know, let it out, I’m here_.  Letting James pin him hard against the wall and grind out his frustration until they’re both panting and James is having trouble remembering his name, let alone his anger at himself.

            It’s Sirius spending weeks at a time lost in his own head, and James sitting next to him on the couch or bed or floor, pulling him into his lap with both arms wrapped around him, like James can physically shield him from the depression if he tries hard enough.  It’s Sirius burying his face in James’s neck, pretending that it works.

            It’s blowjobs in the locker room after James is done with Quidditch practice.  It’s Sirius punching the Ravenclaw who calls James a blood traitor, and James punching the guy who hits Sirius back.  It’s each of them knowing exactly what the other means from a quirk of an eyebrow or a twitch of a nose.  It’s them pranking the hell out of each other every April Fool’s Day.

            It’s Sirius knowing only one place to go after he leaves his parents’, and realizing that his home isn’t a place but a person.

            It’s James feeling lucky and delighted and content, like he’s found something he never knew he was looking for.

 

 

* * *

 

II.  Lost

_Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t found your compartment on the train?_ James sometimes asks, and he always shudders and says,

            _I don’t want to_.

            Because really, James is the best thing in his life.  His first real friend, his friend who chooses him, his friend who likes Sirius for himself and not his ancestry, his _best_ friend, his friend who is the first person to say _I love you_ to him with no strings attached.

            And Sirius would probably go through the muggles’ literal Hell for Regulus.  All his mates, and Mr. and Mrs. Potter, and even old Minnie  McGee make his time at Hogwarts better than he’d known life could be.  But it’s a life he’s gone through as half of a two-headed monster, JamesandSirius, and he can’t imagine it any other way.

 

            It’s James who brings up dating and girls and Lily Evans in fifth year, somehow managing to eclipse even their recent triumph as Anamagi.  They’re getting dressed and being slow about it; everyone else has already left for breakfast—without agreeing to save the two of them any, the bastards.

            _What is it about me, Pads?_ He complains, carefully messing his hair in the mirror.  _She gets along fine with Moony_.

            _Ask her yourself_ , Sirius says with some of the disdain he wishes didn’t come so naturally to him.  _I certainly don’t understand her_.

            _I just don’t get—she hangs out with_ Snape _for Merlin’s sake, and she won’t even talk to me unless it’s about class!_

_That’s not true, you prat.  She just doesn’t flirt with you._

_Well I wish she would.  Maybe I should ask her on a proper date, what d’you think?_

_Maybe_ , Sirius shrugs.  He’s not sure what Evans’s problem is—he never needed anything as formal as a date to fall in love with James.

            James sighs to his reflection one more time.

            _Best head down to breakfast, yeah?_   He claps Sirius on the shoulder and walks out before Sirius can suggest a better way to take advantage of the empty dorm.  This happens sometimes—James pushes forward through everything and Sirius follows close enough to touch, terrified of being left behind.

            It’s okay though, Sirius tells himself.  It’s not like they’re actually the same person; he’d like James a whole lot less if they were.  They’re not always going to be perfectly in synch.  It’s okay.

            The moment stutters in time with Sirius’s heartbeat.

 

            A few weeks later James walks away from him again just after Sirius does the stupidest thing of his entire worthless fucking life. He walks away and saves Snivellus’s pathetic skin and cleans up Sirius’s mess and he walks away.

            Sirius begs for Remus’s forgiveness.  Screams at Dumbledore and McGonagall that he didn’t mean it for fuck’s sake he’s not a murderer, he’s not his family.  _James_ is his family.

            James walks away.

            So he starts eating alone in the kitchen.  Nicks as much of Slughorn’s liquor as he can carry.  He makes friends with the mad portrait of the knight in the Divination tower.  Sir Caddywhack or whatever his name is isn’t half-bad company; he cheers when Sirius starts slashing tapestries and smashing bottles, congratulates him on the _intimidating display of martial prowess_.  A cot appears for him in a random corridor on the seventh floor, and Sirius sleeps there without questioning it.

            _This is okay_ , Sirius thinks.  _This is okay_.

            He doesn’t feel the stinging jinx Mother hits him with after he comes home having left his trunk at Hogwarts, or the one that’s punishment for his OWL results.  Turns out it is possible to get a T if you skip the History of Magic exam altogether.  He wonders if this is what it feels like to free fall without a wand.  He wonders if he should find a cliff somewhere so he could try it and see.

            _You have got to snap out of this_ , Regulus growls at him sometime in July.

            _I don’t know if I can_.

            _Sirius_ , Rex begs, sounding so much younger than Sirius remembers him being.

            _I’ll try_.

            He comes back down to earth, slowly.  Close enough for Father’s endorsement of Voldemort to get under his skin and Mother’s diatribes against Mudbloods to raise his hackles.  He’s got a cut over his eye and a matching one all down his arm for being stupid enough to actually raise his wand to defend himself.  Nothing is okay.

            He leaves.  He leaves in the middle of the night because he’s just as much of a coward as he’s always been, but he does sneak into Regulus’s room to crush him in a hug.  Who knows what Rex will tell their parents, but Sirius is certain he’s too light of a sleeper not to have heard Sirius say goodbye.

            He apparates away without a license, showing up miraculously un-splinched in the garden of Potter Manor because he was thinking of home and his home isn’t a place.

            _I’m sorry_ , he says into the shoulder of the dressing gown Mrs. Potter wore to answer the door as she hugs him.  _I’m so sorry, I didn’t know where else to go and I couldn’t stay there_.

            James comes down the front stairs, must have heard all the noise, and Sirius looks a wreck.  _Is_ a wreck.  His first instinct is to hide behind little Mrs. Potter, but James finds him and he’s there and he’s holding Sirius more tightly than he ever has before.

            _In June_ , Sirius says later in James’s room.  _I thought that was it.  I thought I had lost you._

            James looks sad the way Rex sometimes does, the way that makes him look as old and world-weary as Dumbledore, but he pulls Sirius in for a kiss.

            _We’ve all done stupid things, Padfoot.  I’m not going anywhere_.

 

            It’s not a hard transition, though, to go from weeks of shutting each other out to months of drifting apart.  All Sirius has to do is withdraw a little, break off their kisses so James can’t pull away first, hide behind Remus and Pete.  Surrounded by other people he can slowly extricate himself from their bond, keep it Remus and Peter and James.  And Sirius.

            Lily also makes a convenient wedge, and a surprisingly pretty and likeable one.  She’s not a half-bad dueler either—Gupta pairs them together in DADA at the beginning of sixth year and they stay partners until they graduate.  By seventh year midterms they’re revising nearly all of their practical skills by trying to use them against each other in empty classrooms.  It’s a good setup; Lily’s more interesting to fight than James, whose style is too familiar, or Remus who usually sticks to defense.  And she talks better smack than Peter.

            _My grandmother could conjure bigger birds than that, Black, and she’s a muggle!_

 _Sorry Evans, I thought I’d go a bit easy on you.  All those late nights doing important_ Head _business.  I didn’t know if you’d be off your game_.  He waggles his eyebrows, leaning into the double entendre of “head”.  She turns his hair green for it, but her face is red.

            _It was only a matter of time for those two_ , he thinks.  He’s not surprised, though he is getting annoyed with the furtive, evaluative glances Remus shoots him whenever James’s dating life comes up in conversation.  And he doesn’t miss the way Lily neatly trots around the subject when they’re together, even though they talk about nearly everything else.

            He confides in her about missing Rex.  When her sister un-invites Lily from her wedding, Sirius is by her side, helping curse all of Petunia’s letters into oblivion.  If Sirius hadn’t already realized exactly how bullshit pureblood supremacy was, Lily certainly would have brought him around.  She still treats him to passionate political rants at least once a week and shares his frustration at the fact that words aren’t going to make one damn difference in this war.

            _You don’t have to tiptoe around me, you know,_ he wants to tell her.  _It’s okay._

           

            Whatever he and James had, it’s slipping away.  It’s not a fight, not like Lily and her explosive end with Snape, or the way Regulus just pretends not to see Sirius when their eyes meet in the corridor.  It’s slower.  It’s more insidious.  It’s the air containing slightly less oxygen each day until Sirius wonders how he can still breathe.

            It’s Sirius grinning—genuinely, he hopes—the first time James announces he’s taking Lily on a date.  Clapping him on the back with a _Congratulations, you prick_ but not going in for the hug.  It’s Sirius letting James know that _Evans is mad, completely bonkers, but she prefers the Hog’s Head to the Three Broomsticks and for Merlin’s sake don’t take her to that new place, Puddlefat’s or whatever_ , because he knows Lily would rather people watch than be a part of a cheesy romance scene and Sirius wants this to go well for both of them.  It’s him going to bed early that night, waking up from nightmares drenched in sweat, tangled in his sheets, and perfectly alone in his bed.

            It’s James telling McGonagall not to worry about inviting any of the League scouts to his final Quidditch matches and Sirius joking that he won’t even bother sitting the NEWTs.  It’s Dumbledore regarding them without the barest hint of a twinkle in his blue eyes and telling them that the Order of the Phoenix would be honored to add such talented members to their ranks, if heartsick to welcome such young ones.  It’s rarely being paired together for missions and going days not knowing if James is alright and hoping with every exhausted nerve in his body that someone would think to tell him if things weren’t okay.

            It’s standing with James as Lily walks down the aisle toward both of them and it’s James turning away from Sirius to face her.  It’s the two of them being so happy that Sirius can’t bring himself to hate Lily or hate James and the only person left to hate is himself.

            It’s James hugging him and saying _I haven’t gone anywhere, Pads_ , and Sirius saying _I know_ and wondering when they started lying to each other.  It’s holding his godson in his arms and crying for the life he’ll never have.  It’s Sirius working to get himself off and not being able to remember what it feels like to have someone else’s lips on his.  It’s James knowing Sirius would die for any of the Potters in a second, but Sirius still not being sure if he’s the best choice to act as their most trusted person.  It’s spending Halloween unable to shake the feeling that something’s wrong.

            It’s finding James lying broken and wandless on the floor in Godric’s Hollow.

It’s Sirius losing everything before he ever sets foot in Azkaban.

           

            _Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t found your compartment on the train way back when?_

_All the fucking time._

**Author's Note:**

> please comment and let me know what you think I will love you forever.
> 
> find me here or @peterpettgrw on tumblr.
> 
> thanks for reading <3


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